Notwithstanding all this, the little slant-eyed men with their grotesque superstitions, their stiff, stark, unhomelike homes, add a quaintness and a touch of color to this romantic city. Gay placards of intense greens and vermilions flutter from their doorposts. Under the dull outer tunics of the elders gleam surtouts of gay brocades, while the few children, little faithful copies of their sires, all tricked out like the lanterns of the night, go toddling on tiny, rocking shoes through the narrow, dingy streets. The Chinese theatres, temples, and restaurants are full of the Oriental strangeness. The interiors of some of them are lacquered and varnished like huge tea-boxes. [Illustration A BUSINESS CENTRE.] As one gets a strip of Cathay in Chinatown, so he may find a corner of Italy on the south slopes of Telegraph Hill. Here children, looking like the cherubs of their kinsmen, the old masters, swarm through steep narrow streets, upon curious little balconies, out of odd windows, or upon the steps of chapels. The architecture of San Francisco is a medley of many schools. The buildings, especially the homes, are largely of wood; the recurring feature is the bay window that focuses the light and heat. To the newcomer they all seem of the same color, for the fogs and winds soon reduce all hues to a fine, restful gray. In the beginning, by a curious irony, stone and lumber were shipped from the East and from Asia to this land of forests and granite to build some of the structures still holding their places against the pressure of time. In the newer buildings of the city there is some attempt to make the architecture express the function of the structure--the stability of the business house, the aspiration of the church, the simple security of the home. The new City Hall is an example of permanence and chaste elegance. The old mission architecture is being revived. This Spanish-Moorish adaptation is the most characteristic and harmonious development of Californian architecture. Built of the earth, the old mission piles seem almost as if not made by man, but nature. For they repeat in long stretches and low swells the contour of the hills about them, and give back their color-tones of dun and tan and rusty red. The year the new and greater name was given to the city, a misfortune fell upon the streets. Regardless of cliff and curve, ignoring height and hollow, the streets were laid out in undeviating straight lines. And so a city on fairer than Roman hills, with circling waterways more lovely than the curve of Constantinople's Golden Horn, was deformed as far as its high bearing could be hurt; was checkered by pitiless compass lines, when it might have had windings and slow curves and gentle slopes.